This invention relates to the art of agricultural machinery, and more particularly to a new and improved apparatus for preparing a field for the planting of seed.
One area of use of the present invention is in preparing a field for the planting of corn, although the principles of the present invention can be variously applied. In preparing a field for seed planting it has been the usual practice first to plow or turn over the ground, then to drag or otherwise break up the plowed chunks of ground and then finally to traverse the field with a seed planter. The foregoing procedure requires traversing the field with tractor-drawn machines and implements at least three times resulting in a considerable expenditure of fuel and time. The no-till method consequently was developed whereby soil preparation and seed planting are performed during a single traversing of the field with planting and soil conditioning equipment, and the no-till method results in savings of fuel, time, moisture and soil.
Equipment for no-till planting heretofore has included a tractor-drawn seed planter provided with a relatively wide rippled or fluted colter mounted forwardly of the planter for each row and which serves to prepare the ground prior to introduction of seed and possibly also fertilizer by the planter. This arrangement works well in uniformly soft soil conditions but is unsatisfactory for no-till planting on fields having relatively hard soil and/or non-uniform soil conditions.